She swallowed the cat...

... To catch the rat...

Eram's coming...  The new FAA en-route air traffic control center radar display is undergoing another 48 hour test, with a new patch to fix the problems they found last week...

Among the current problems, the patch they put in last week to try and fix some of the previously identified problems introduces us to a new bug, in which the altitude conflict probing (a tool used to predict a conflict when you "trial plan" an altitude change works in a way that nobody predicted.  Rather than predict a conflict based on the aircrafts real time position, ERAM backtracks the aircraft to it's previous fix (up to an hour in the past), then assigns the altitude and probes for conflicts from that point.  In otherwords, it's useless to us.  So today, when I get in for an overtime shift, I get a briefing on how to work around this "problem".  (Basically don't use conflict probe when trial planning an altitude). 

But this latest patch did fix the problem of aircraft creating a false conflict with itself in the middle of nowhere.  So, in an effort to fix this problem, they created a new one...

...She swallowed the rat to catch the mouse...

As a result, they're introducing a patch in the middle of next week that will un-fix the random conflict alert problem, but fix the conflict probe problem...

...She swallowed the mouse to catch the spider, that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her...

Who knows what the next patch will break.

...She swallowed the spider to catch the fly...

But we're still on track to launch this bottle rocket next weekend, bugs or no bugs...

... I don't know why she swallowed the fly.  Perhaps she'll die...

Next up?  Will the FAA try to keep london bridge from falling down... 

Clear skies,
Jim